Characterization Quotes

“I've committed to nothing...and that's just suicide...by tiny, tiny increments.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“One of the commonest and most generally accepted delusions is that every man can be qualified in some particular way -- said to be kind, wicked, stupid, energetic, apathetic, and so on. People are not like that. We may say of a man that he is more often kind than cruel, more often wise than stupid, more often energetic than apathetic or vice versa; but it could never be true to say of one man that he is kind or wise, and of another that he is wicked or stupid. Yet we are always classifying mankind in this way. And it is wrong. Human beings are like rivers; the water is one and the same in all of them but every river is narrow in some places, flows swifter in others; here it is broad, there still, or clear, or cold, or muddy or warm. It is the same with men. Every man bears within him the germs of every human quality, and now manifests one, now another, and frequently is quite unlike himself, while still remaining the same man.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Resurrection

“She was like Marat only with nobody to kill her.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“If through no fault of his own the hero is crushed by a bulldozer in Act II, we are not impressed. Even though life is often like this—the absconding cashier on his way to Nicaragua is killed in a collision at the airport, the prominent statesman dies of a stroke in the midst of the negotiations he has spent years to bring about, the young lovers are drowned in a boating accident the day before their marriage—such events, the warp and woof of everyday life, seem irrelevant, meaningless. They are crude, undigested, unpurged bits of reality—to draw a metaphor from the late J. Edgar Hoover, they are “raw files.” But it is the function of great art to purge and give meaning to human suffering, and so we expect that if the hero is indeed crushed by a bulldozer in Act II there will be some reason for it, and not just some reason but a good one, one which makes sense in terms of the hero’s personality and action. In fact, we expect to be shown that he is in some way responsible for what happens to him.”
― Bernard Knox, The Oedipus Cycle: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone

“You could sometimes see her twelfth year in her cheeks, or her ninth sparkling from her eyes; and even her fifth would flit over the curves of her mouth now and then.”
― Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles

“Bless thy simplicity, Tess”
― Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles

“She is pure Alice in Wonderland, and her appearance and demeanor are a nicely judged mix of the Red Queen and a Flamingo.”
― Truman Capote

“I ran across an excerpt today (in English translation) of some dialogue/narration from the modern popular writer, Paulo Coelho in his book: Aleph.(Note: bracketed text is mine.)... 'I spoke to three scholars,' [the character says 'at last.'] ...two of them said that, after death, the [sic (misprint, fault of the publisher)] just go to Paradise. The third one, though, told me to consult some verses from the Koran. [end quote]' ...I can see that he's excited. [narrator]' ...Now I have many positive things to say about Coelho: He is respectable, inspiring as a man, a truth-seeker, and an appealing writer; but one should hesitate to call him a 'literary' writer based on this quote. A 'literary' author knows that a character's excitement should be 'shown' in his or her dialogue and not in the narrator's commentary on it. Advice for Coelho: Remove the 'I can see that he's excited' sentence and show his excitement in the phrasing of his quote.(Now, in defense of Coelho, I am firmly of the opinion, having myself written plenty of prose that is flawed, that a novelist should be forgiven for slipping here and there.)Lastly, it appears that a belief in reincarnation is of great interest to Mr. Coelho ... Just think! He is a man who has achieved, (as Leonard Cohen would call it), 'a remote human possibility.' He has won lots of fame and tons of money. And yet, how his preoccupation with reincarnation—none other than an interest in being born again as somebody else—suggests that he is not happy!”
― Roman Payne

“Favoring 'resolution' the way we do, it is hard for us men to write great love stories. Why?, because we want to tell too much. We aren’t satisfied unless at the end of the story the characters are lying there, panting.”
― Roman Payne

“A good American makes propaganda for whatever existence has forced him to become.”
― Saul Bellow

“Clever's not enough to hold me - I want characters who are more than devices to be moved about for Effect.”
― Laura Anne Gilman

“I do not know the man I should avoid So soon as that spare Cassius. He reads much, He is a great observer, and he looks Quite through the deeds of men. He loves no plays As thou dost, Anthony; he heard no music; Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort As if he mocked himself and scorned his spirit That could be moved to smile at anything. Such men as he be never at heart's ease Whiles they behold a greater than themselves, And therefore are they very dangerous.”
― William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

“Most of these stories are on the tragic side. But the reader must not suppose that the incidents I have narrated were of common occurrence. The vast majority of these people, government servants, planters, and traders, who spent their working lives in Malaya were ordinary people ordinarily satisfied with their station in life. They did the jobs they were paid to do more or less competently,. They were as happy with their wives as are most married couples. They led humdrum lives and did very much the same things every day. Sometimes by way of a change they got a little shooting; but at a rule, after they had done their day's work, they played tennis if there were people to play with, went to the club at sundown if there was a club in the vicinity, drank in moderation, and played bridge. They had their little tiffs, their little jealousies, their little flirtations, their little celebrations. They were good, decent, normal people.

I respect, and even admire, such people, but they are not the sort of people I can write stories about. I write stories about people who have some singularity of character which suggests to me that they may be capable of behaving in such a way as to give me an idea that I can make use of, or about people who by some accident or another, accident of temperament, accident of environment, have been involved in unusual contingencies. But, I repeat, they are the exception.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Collected Short Stories: Volume 4

“He gave me a look of great contempt; as I supposed, for venturing, even by implication, to draw a parallel between a lack of affluence that might, literally, affect my purchase of rare vintages, and a figure of speech intended delicately to convey his own dire want for the bare necessities of life. He remained silent for several seconds, as if trying to make up his mind whether he could ever bring himself to speak to me again; and then said gruffly: 'I've got to go now.”
― Anthony Powell, A Buyer's Market

“No, he was silver and amber, starlings and deep, deep purple skies of the night.”
― Gina Marinello-Sweeney, Prince of Chandeliers

“Structurally unsound,” Jainan said. “Blame the contractors.”
― Everina Maxwell, Winter’s Orbit

“Empathy isn’t just a byproduct of evolution; it’s humanity’s superpower. It enables us to form cohesive groups, collaborating in ways that make the whole greater than the sum of its parts. Without empathy and mutual understanding, civilizations as we know them wouldn’t exist.”
― Will Raywood, Trust Your Story: Master Storytelling and Build a Successful Creative Writing Career

“What truly matters isn’t your feelings or even those of your characters—it’s the emotional experience of your audience.”
― Will Raywood, Trust Your Story: Master Storytelling and Build a Successful Creative Writing Career

“In general, the best antagonists in fiction represent the protagonist’s Shadow. By confronting and ultimately defeating the antagonist, the hero reintegrates these disparate aspects of the self and becomes whole.”
― Will Raywood, The Natural Laws of Story: Master the Art and Science of Engaging Narratives

“The fact is, the Time Traveller was one of those men who are too clever to be believed: you never felt that you saw all round him, you always suspected some subtle reserve, some ingenuity in ambush, behind his lucid frankness.”
― H.G. Wells, The Time Machine

“The pride that usually protected her like a well-worn shawl scratched at her deceptively sensitive skin. It felt as though with age, the knots of its knit grew tighter and stronger, yet the edges ever frayed.”
― Molly Collier, The Paragon

“It sometimes seemed as though there was no place for a reserved woman in the world. One was either maternal or harsh. Warm or cold. Mirai wore her chilly nature as a badge of shame, though she knew herself to be deeper and more complex than such a label. If the rest of the world was unable to see her, so be it. Mirai knew that she was more than just one thing. More than just one box. She was a myriad.”
― Molly Collier, The Paragon

“Why was it that everyone she met looked so much worse up close?”
― Molly Collier, The Paragon

“Why was it that she’d never been able to find kinship with someone her age? Why was it that the few ties she fashioned always ended up coming undone by her own doing?”
― Molly Collier, The Paragon

“But she knew herself. Her body longed to feel pain, to exact it, but her mind feared it too much to allow herself the freedom to. Besides, her knuckles were already blistering from the beating they’d been taking for the better part of an hour. Without the gloves she’d have shattered a hand by now.
Wouldn’t that be just like her. To fear pain so and yet stumble into it at every opportunity.”
― Molly Collier, The Paragon

“Gold had many admirers, though Doha himself was not one of them. Too many allowed it to occupy the space inside their chests. He didn’t understand it. For a metal, it was pretty weak and unimpressive. And as currency, he’d only ever longed for enough. His father had worked his body broken so that they might have it. Doha did not think excess was worth his father’s misery. Still, as he beheld how the light reflected on the surface, he simply couldn’t help but be taken with its simple beauty.”
― Molly Collier, The Paragon

“Was there not life in divinity? Or was that which is holy beyond life?”
― Molly Collier, The Paragon

“In any friendship or partnership, there is always one that shines just a little bit brighter than the other. He doesn’t mean to, that’s just who he is. And I love him for it. I’ve learned this the hard way, that you can either resent a star for shining brighter, or sit back and enjoy the show.”
― Molly Collier, The Paragon

“There was no state of being “fixed,” Doha had learned. There was just the period between bouts of this requires attention immediately. There were certainly wrong ways to do things, but there was no one right way. If functionality was the goal, well, there were multiple routes to it, and Doha relished the freedom in that.”
― Molly Collier, The Paragon

“What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies...”
― Jeph Loeb, Batman: Hush